Between Angels and Vampires
by Sadistic Narcissism
Summary: Crossover with Anita Blake. Written for a friend, but I inexplicably love it. AsherErik. Could anything be more perfect?


_This coast crying out for tragedy like all beautiful places: and like the passionate spirit of humanity  
Pain for its bread: Gods', many victims', the painful deaths, the horrible disfigurements.._

The water was a silver mirage far below. It crashed upon the great black teeth of the rocks. Against it, Asher's figure was tall and black: a statue-tree at the cliff's horizon or a cemetery angel lost and washed to strange shores. He wore a long black coat, over which his golden hair spilled in coils silvered by the moonlight. His silhouette, on one side, seraphic, lowered to the small creased envelope he held in his hand.

The wax was broken. The envelope, addressed in a curious awkward hand, the handwriting of a child who had not yet learned the cursive, bore only his name and no posting address. The ink was scarlet, as if it had been burned with match-heads. Asher stared into the waters and thought of what was inside.

To the Angel of Death from the Angel of Music

Dear Monsieur-

You will not, I hope, think me unfeeling in that it took me so long to write you regarding our last conversation. You will know, and you better than anyone, what traps and snares lie in the heart.

Know that I have lost, not only the beloved whom I have mentioned to you on more than one occasion, but also my thirst for life and whatever passed for genius, which I have allowed you and so many others to flatter. Know that I turn to you only now that I have nothing, and do not think me cold for doing so.

You know well the terror of what you offer. Know also that I accept.

That there be no misunderstandings between us,  
I sign this  
Your devoted  
Erik

Asher's fingers clenched around the letter. Poor paper snarled into ruined folds under a hand like a vise. His body strummed like the wires of a cursed piano, tense and trembling with rage and an unspeakable sorrow. Whatever Asher had endured, whatever fires of hate and rage burned within his heart, there was room there for compassion for Erik. There was room for fury that yet again he had been damaged.

He'd read the Paris papers and knew the outcome of Erik's war of love. One man dead, and the girl was to marry the Vicomte. He did not think Erik cold to write him at this time of all times. Indeed, he marveled at the man's courage... and hoped to add to this, the man's trust.

_I said in my heart,  
"Better invent than suffer: imagine victims  
Lest your own flesh be chosen the agonist, or you  
Martyr some creature to the beauty of this place."_

He remembered his own escape.

The majesty of the Paris Opera-house was well known in that time, but its pleasures were too soft and somehow strident for the Vampire Council. They preferred their perversions and their vanities, their myriad deceits and games. Asher was weary of always being the butt of the joke. He was weary of the pain, which whittled and burned away at the rage like cold acid. He slipped inside unnoticed, hiding his still-fresh scars under the edge of a raised hood.

What people saw, they deemed lovely, but Asher was in little mood to be seen. Little mood, indeed, for Opera. He was in the mind to find an empty box and sit there, alone in the dark, until the darkness which had seized him relented, or he had some thought of retaliation, some burning dream of cold vengeance possibly achieved.

He thought of dark things. Of that night, which had been like a death on a cross. Of the sick agony of nights since, the sick agony of the mirror. Of the cold emptiness that was a burning hole through him where _Julianna_ had been, and of his love for her, which would not falter or die over the centuries, and the pain of it burned afresh whenever he saw a girl who looked a bit like her, or heard something which sounded like her name.

He thought of the faces of those who laughed, or those who stared in undisguised horror. Thought of them burnt and blackened, ripped with torture devices, the teeth wrenched out, the jaws broken. Thought of them: broken, horrid things, worse than himself.

He only ceased to think these things when the Prima Donna, whom he acknowledged somewhere behind his roiling thoughts, was only passable,- began to sing something like 'Who are you who has stolen into my chamber under the cover of night?' and a soft voice just next to his ear whispered.

_"Indeed. For it is rare I find strangers in my box, so alone and silent."_

Asher whirled, but there was no one there. He thought for a moment, with a harsh burst of fury, that it was one of his own kind, making a joke. Little would be their laughter once he had his hands on them... but...

Instead, it seemed to him a hidden panel or a hidden room. He did not attempt to find a way in, instead he responded. "I did not know this box was occupied. I shall find another place to be alone with my thoughts." He let his voice free, to caress the air with a shiveringly sensual darkness. A darkness one might find so terribly hard to deny. Asher rose, his coat whispering, and had taken two steps toward the door of the box when he heard a harshly whispered:

"Wait."

He paused.

"What manner of music does a creature like you enjoy?" it asked, and Asher stiffened at the recognition.

"It has been long since I have cared in the slightest for music," he replied.

The voice said, "Wait till the play is over. Wait till a trapdoor is opened. I will find you. I will guide you. I will play for you music no other could enjoy, that no other could understand."

Not knowing why he waited, Asher did as he was asked.

_It is not good to forget over what gulfs the spirit  
Of the beauty of humanity, the petal of a lost flower blown seaward by the night-wind, floats to its quietness._

Asher left his hood up, even after he had dropped silently through the trapdoor and waited in the darkness of the corridor. The Opera-house's underpinnings were rank with the smell of mold and precipitation. He saw very clearly in the darkness, but did not quite see how the figure advanced until it came near to him.

The man was skeletally thin under his black evening clothes. He wore a mask that hid his entire face, but the eyes behind it seemed deep set and gleamed with a power of extraordinary will. What could be seen of his hair was black.

He stared at Asher for a moment. Asher thought he saw further into the shadows of his hood than many could, though what he said was, "Then I am the only contradiction, for you are as beautiful as your voice, as _she_ is."

Asher did not ask who 'she' was, but only let out a sound of brutal amusement and tossed back his hood, raking his golden hair from his face to show the ruined profile. To show the scars that made the skin run like wax, made the face a distorted thing out of nightmare or myth. The blue eyes, paler than human, gleamed out of it.

The strange, spidery man did not laugh or gasp, or make any sign of disgust or astonishment. He only said, in a curiously commanding tone, "Half-beautiful, then. Come this way."

He led Asher an impossible distance, through tunnels that turned and tunnels that twisted, through strange doors and places he could not have remembered, till finally they crossed a dark sea upon a small boat, and then there were more twists and tunnels, until there was a great room, filled with candles.

Asher lounged upon a pile of bric-a-brac, smoldering with resentment over the callousness of the man's statement about his scars. He did not know what sort of reaction he wanted, but this contemptuous understanding was not it. He waited while the man took his place at a piano, withdrew a bit of handwritten music from a small leather folder, and began to play... and sing.

Then resentment, pain, anger was long forgotten. The music stabbed like a knife, but it was in everything so cathartic and beautiful that it buoyed Asher in a tremendous rush, as if he were carried aloft by great black wings. Every pain, every lash of hate, every uncertainty, loss, longing, lust- echoed in that music, was exalted and carried to its perfect conclusion. It was the music of the darkness of the soul, the music of terrible truths. It was the most beautiful thing Asher had ever witnessed.

The man's voice, within it, was a thread of haunting sweetness. Here was where the understanding of all this darkness lay, but also a purity that transcended it. It was a compelling voice, caught between the angelic and the diabolic, breathtaking, giving everything it had to the shadows of that dark room, of which Asher was one.

When he stopped, Asher said, "I must know your name."

"My name is Erik. I do not remember why, I believe it was accident."

Asher smiled. "My name is Asher. The reason is the same."

The two men watched each other. "I am half in love with you, Erik," Asher said. "I would offer you a gift if I thought you would receive it. Have you passion enough?"

"You are beautiful," said Erik, "scars or not, and the touch of the beautiful is something I am denied."

"Foolish words," said Asher.

Erik laughed harshly. "I am never foolish. Will you see why?" And he ripped the mask from his face.

There, in the candlelight, Asher was face to face with a skull. A living Death's-head, what flesh it possessed twisted in an expression of mockery. He could not pretend to find it beautiful, but he said, "I have seen worse things, Erik."

He said this as gently as he could, and coming close to Erik, held his body (which seemed of iron strength to men, and delicate as a bundle of dry sticks to Asher) close to him. Erik breathed in the scent of Asher's hair, struggled, paled.

Asher lowered his head. Carefully, he captured the deep fire of Erik's eyes, sent him adrift through a shadowy euphoria he doubted Erik had ever felt. When his teeth found skin and tore it, he bit deep and with the firm intention to give Erik everything of it, everything of the release the terrible dark needful passion elevated in his music promised he possessed. Every happiness and dream of dark love captured in the sweet notes that had given Asher solace.

Erik cried out in his arms, in utter ecstasy, his body jerking into orgasm. Asher closed the wounds and kissed him, laying up upon the floor gently. Erik could not move. Asher knew it had been his first time, knew it had been so fierce for him that it would be echoed in his dreams forever, for as long as Asher's face drifted in them.

He smiled and kissed the Angel of Music. He found his own way out.

Poem quotes from "Apology for Bad Dreams" by Robinson Jeffers.  
More coming.


End file.
